adams, walter sydney

adams, walter sydney in Science

Adams

(ād'əmz) American astronomer who demonstrated that the essential brightness of a star could be calculated by studying its spectrum and who introduced a method for measuring the distance of stars based on their brightness. In 1915 he discovered Sirius B, the first known white dwarf star, and his measurement of the gravitational red shift in the light leaving its surface was accepted as evidence for Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.